Mountains Once More
by Aki4
Summary: Thus did he attain enlightenment." The monk and the monkey. Check out my lj for the formatted version.


i don't want to work, and i don't want to blog about work. i  
  
won't even blog about how some of that work paid off when our  
  
presentation to the deloitte reps went pretty well, overall.  
  
instead, i'll try and untie the knotty complexities of writing 39  
  
fic which doesn't turn one of the characters into a female or a  
  
pedophile.  
  
***  
  
Mountains Once More  
  
a 39 fic by Aki  
  
***  
  
Once upon a time there was a monk who sought enlightenment through travel.  
  
At first, when he looked at mountains, he saw mountains. When he looked at rivers, he saw rivers.  
  
After ten years of traveling, he was wiser. He looked at mountains, and saw more than mountains. He looked at rivers, and saw more than rivers.  
  
After twenty years of traveling, his understanding had grown still further. When he looked at mountains, he saw mountains once more. And when he looked at rivers, they were rivers again.  
  
Thus did he achieve enlightenment.  
  
***  
  
If someday you let go of these fingers  
  
To pursue a far-off blue sky  
  
I'll send you flying with a kick to your backside  
  
Say "Get moving!" and laugh  
  
--text next to a picture of Sanzo, pg. 10, Vol. 6  
  
But then I wouldn't be able to see the stars.  
  
But then I wouldn't be able to see you.  
  
--text next to a picture of Goku, pg. 36, Vol. 6  
  
Goku once asked him what the big deal was with Nirvana. He'd been told that someone had gotten there by sitting under a tree. How did you get anywhere, sitting under a tree?  
  
He had tried to explain, briefly, the tenets of Buddhism. Nowadays a question merited some attempt at explanation, because there was actually a chance that the monkey would listen. It was an odd sensation, looking up and finding those eyes fixed on his as he spoke. It was strange to see Goku holding still for any reason, as it would have been strange to see a bird freeze in mid-flight. It was even stranger when he felt his words being pulled out by that uncanny concentration, and heard them vanish down dark- tunneled ears. Until recently he'd thought those very ears were going to be permanently stone-walled.  
  
There was no pattern to his questions, no apparent theme. Yet Goku listened intently, as if he were being given directions. As if he, too, were sitting down but getting somewhere.  
  
He crossed the stone steps and entered the yard. In late fall it was beginning to look unkempt, the ragged outlines of stubborn leaves weighing down naked brown bones.  
  
"Sanzo-sama--"  
  
His mouth twitched in irritation. He had asked that this garden be reserved for his meditation. It was a lie and possibly an abuse of power. He could meditate anywhere; he came to this garden to smoke. But he'd grown used to being ambushed on the road West and it would take more than two years to undo what five had done. All the same, he was half glad he hadn't taken his gun. Being ambushed would never change. How he could deal with it, alas, did.  
  
He turned, and managed not to growl. "Yes?"  
  
It was one of the new acolytes, the one with the perpetually running nose. They all looked frightened of him. It annoyed him no end, but it kept them from pestering him, so he endured it with ill grace which only served to worsen their fear. By contrast, twelve years of dodging bullets had given Goku an immunity to his temper second to none. The idiot's oblivious attitude in the face of mortal danger irritated him too. He wondered if he were just an irritable person by nature, and decided that he didn't care.  
  
"Well?" he snapped. The acolyte cowered.  
  
"Sanzo-sama...your...er, disciple...says that he's leaving now."  
  
He absorbed the news. It didn't take as long as he'd thought.  
  
His right had was digging into the left sleeve of his robe, drawing forth a cigarette and rolling it back and forth between nicotine-stained fingers before lighting it with a flick. The pack was worn and battered; he smoked less these days. Withdrawal was less aggravating than being constantly nattered at by the head of the temple. The man was as bad as Hakkai. Maybe worse. Hakkai nagged at little things in place of big ones, whereas bureaucracy everywhere believed that little things were big ones.  
  
He took a long, hard drag, then let the smoke wisp out from his nostrils. He watched it curl upwards in the chill air. The rest escaped from his lungs when, hardly aware that he was speaking aloud, he said, "It's about damn time."  
  
***  
  
"Can't you behave yourself?" His tone was sharp, and the boy pulled himself in from a full sprawl with a speed that made his muscles ache to see. "This is the fourth complaint about you I've received in two days."  
  
Goku stared back at him, half guilt, half defiance. "I just touched it," he muttered.  
  
He refused to smile. "With a finger covered in chocolate."  
  
Goku jerked his chin up. "With CHOCOLATE, not BLOOD. Geez! It's not like I destroyed it, it's still perfectly readable! For all you know, maybe the guy who wrote it LIKED chocolate."  
  
His head was beginning to hurt. So were his ears. Goku's whine made whetted steel seem blunt. He raised his voice. "You idiot. That was one of the earliest copies of the Amitayurdyhana sutra."  
  
"So?" The irrelevance of the response bothered him more than the irreverence. He'd never much cared for reverence himself.  
  
"So he didn't eat chocola--Look, that's not the point. Shut up and quit trying to distract me."  
  
That won him a look of rebellion. "You always tell me to shut up."  
  
"You always make too much noise," he shot back.  
  
"Quit treating me like a child!"  
  
The outburst surprised him less than it had the first time. "Then don't act like one."  
  
Goku, who had leaned forward, sat back hard. For one whole second there was silence. Then, "You suck at this," burst out in half a breath, and Goku was gone, feet slapping against the stone floor of the hall. The sound made a very thin echo.  
  
***  
  
He never understood why people insisted that monasteries had be poorly insulated. He'd never understood the particular reasoning behind asceticism. After all, it hardly made more sense to be attached to discomfort than it did to be attached to comfort. Less, in fact. At least the desire for material comfort was animal nature. As far as he was aware, the drafts that reached into every corner of the temple would have frozen the backsides of all but the most virtuous. Meditation came easier to him now, and he found that without the wind, he could sometimes drift into a trance even while walking.  
  
He had drifted into one just now and found himself at the garden again. It was buried in snow, the drifts obscuring all but the largest of rocks lining the pond. If he stepped out in his sandals he would sink to his knees, but the weather had yet to turn truly cold, and if he listened he could still hear the running water of the stream.  
  
"Sanzo-sama--"  
  
He twisted around in irritation. "How do you always know where to find me?"  
  
It was a different acolyte, one less tongue-tied. "Because you're always here." He held up a battered envelope, a name scrawled across in childish characters. "Another one came."  
  
"So take it and do what you're supposed to do." Once he'd ridiculed the idea of having subordinates, but sometimes it wasn't worthwhile to fight the system.  
  
The boy didn't move, but tucked the letter into one sleeve, shivering as he asked, "Aren't you cold?"  
  
"No," he replied briefly.  
  
Sharp eyes glanced at him, arrayed in a thin black shirt, dubiously. He decided he liked the frightened ones better. "I don't get it. If you want to know the addresses, why not just keep the letters? Why have Jing write the addresses down but burn them? He's done more than twenty already, he says."  
  
He swung on the boy suddenly. "He reads them?"  
  
The acolyte stood his ground for an impressive moment before saying hastily, "They're just from your traveling friend, he says. Nothing bad."  
  
"Jing's too young to understand. And so are you. Don't you have chores to do?"  
  
The acolyte fled, but did a decent job of denying it. He watched the boy go before turning back to the garden.  
  
***  
  
"Sanzo, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it--honest. I won't do it again!"  
  
"That doesn't change anything."  
  
Outside the moon was full, overfull. It sloshed bright light over everything, painting the ground with shadows. He could feel Goku getting up and moving to his side.  
  
"I know I've been a pain in the butt lately. I'll try harder. Honest. I'll even stop nagging you about cutting back on the cigs."  
  
The garden looked like a dream, too quiet to be real. The scene seemed somehow brittle. Only stupid poets wrote about something so detached from reality, from things that mattered. Life was not a moonlit garden.  
  
"C'mon, Sanzo, I was just mouthing off, I didn't think!"  
  
"Maybe that's why you should leave. Teach you how to think."  
  
"Why are you so pissed about this?!"  
  
"I'm--not mad. And you're leaving."  
  
Strangely, it was that flat admission that got the message through.  
  
"San-zo. Are you--serious?" The question hitched itself out. Hard to believe it was Goku's voice, so low and uncertain. Even now he could still say something to undo what had been done, but he knew he wouldn't. In twelve years Goku had changed, and that meant that this moment was inevitable.  
  
"Sanzo, I..." Lower still. "I love you."  
  
He didn't answer for a long time, and when he finally turned around, Goku had gone.  
  
***  
  
Goku came back in the spring, when the world had thawed enough to reveal both the damage wrought by a long, harsh winter, and the barest hints of new greenery. For a moment he didn't recognize the young man who leaned by his door. He was taller, and besides, Goku would never have leaned and waited. This was a good sign, then, that it was working. It was working a little too well and he had to lean against the wall as well, hoping that the shaking didn't show.  
  
"You're back."  
  
"You didn't read my letters, did you."  
  
"Since you know, why ask?"  
  
"What did you do with them?"  
  
He cleared his throat. "Burned them."  
  
Goku dropped his arms and his new face for a moment and the hurt gaped like a missing tooth. His heart tried to leap two different ways and wound up jerking painfully, once. "I figured it out, though. About us."  
  
"Huh." He couldn't stop looking, scrutinizing every new line. The hair was shorter, the face seemed longer, or perhaps it was the set of the jaw. It might have been his clothing, but his frame a little more solid. Finally, it seemed, some of what he ate was staying on his bones. He'd wondered if that metabolism would ever slow down. He noticed Goku eyeing him as well and suddenly recalled what a senior monk, a kindly old man, one of the alright ones, had said. Something about that shirt making him look like a starved crow. He shrugged his shoulders in defiance. He'd gain it back in the summer.  
  
"You don't want me to get hurt. Or something. You think it's wrong."  
  
"Aren't you hungry?" he asked, and nearly sagged in relief when Goku brightened.  
  
That night they talked for hours, or rather, Goku told him where he'd been while he listened and threw in the occasional sarcastic comment. The two of them were seated on chairs, but sometimes Goku wandered around the room, touching the walls lightly as he described the places he'd seen, the new foods he'd tasted. A lot about the foods, maybe five minutes rhapsodizing about a special kind of layered pastry they made in Fuzhou. The people he'd met. Some he'd liked, others he hadn't. Things that had hurt him. Things that he'd adored. ("You were right, there's a lot out there. It made me think.")  
  
At some point when the fire had been reduced to little more than a flicker beneath the ashes, he shoved Goku at the bed.  
  
A yawn, punctuated by a question. "Where will you sleep?"  
  
"On the floor."  
  
"It's too cold. You look awful. You need sleep."  
  
"I'll be fine. Shut up and sleep."  
  
It was a little strange. They'd never slept in the same room before. Sanzo disliked sharing rooms on principle. He didn't mind Hakkai so much because the man was polite and considerate and almost soundless, except when he talked in his sleep. He talked in his sleep as well, if less often. It had been like an exchange of hostages until it became routine.  
  
Goku's head showed up, a dark blob over the edge of the bed. "Sanzo."  
  
"Shut up, bakazaru."  
  
Surprisingly, he did. For a moment. "You're going to make me leave tomorrow anyway. Aren't you."  
  
The floor was freezing. "Since you know, why ask?"  
  
"I still love you. But, you know...it's okay if you can't...give it back. I promise I won't let it get to me."  
  
He gave up, for one night, and crawled into the sheets. The cold made his bones ache where they'd been broken, especially the ones he'd broken before meeting Hakkai. The monkey was warm, thanks to the damned metabolism he'd spent half his life feeding.  
  
"Y'know, sometimes, I got so lonely that I couldn't breathe. Especially at night, 'cause there was less stuff to see." He let the words wash over him, felt their breathing slow. It was easier, somehow, without the sharp moonlight, so exhausted that he couldn't have moved if fifty assassins climbed through the window.  
  
Before he dozed off he heard Goku say, "Let me stay. Please."  
  
His lips struggled to shape the word, "No."  
  
Goku heard it, or saw it, or guessed it, he didn't know.  
  
"You really, really suck at this," the boy whispered. Then quickly, "You don't. Really. I just wish..."  
  
"It's okay," he muttered, and rolled over to throw one arm across that thin chest.  
  
He was lying and he was sure he'd be punished for it tomorrow. Sometimes karma was swift.  
  
But in the morning Goku was gone. It took him a while to label the feeling he was left with as relief.  
  
***  
  
The letters came infrequently after he left, and more than once he caught himself regretting that he'd told Goku their fate. But it was better this way. Once, they'd stopped coming for two months altogether, and when at last one had arrived he'd nearly had to turn and run at the sight of Jing's wide grin. Only the thought that he could possibly salvage some shreds of dignity (and the fact that the sharp-eyed friend was nowhere to be seen) allowed him to say steadily, "Now go and burn it, like a good boy." Then he'd gone into the garden and smoked five cigarettes.  
  
After that one hiatus they were more regular, if not as frequent as they had been, and that was part of the plan too so he didn't complain. By now Hakkai and Gojyo had found out, so he no longer had to deal with invitations to come visit and play mahjong. He'd gone, once, but the experience had been awkward (especially with Hakkai's shocked eyes which he hadn't concealed quickly enough, and infinitely more annoying, a look from Gojyo of what almost might have been understanding--or pity.) Since then he'd stuck to letters. Hakkai was an excellent correspondent; some part of him enjoyed just looking at the neat flow of characters down the page. And if Goku wrote the two of them, and Hakkai occasionally mentioned the content of those letters, well, he couldn't forswear all their mutual acquaintances.  
  
He'd almost gotten used to it. At night he spent hours, lying awake and listening. Until one day when he was brushing the crimson, star-shaped leaves of the maple off of the path that wound through the garden. "Do I look like I'm incapable of using a broom?" he'd snapped to some scandalized temple-dwellers. He'd been trying to ignore a nagging urge, something moving in the layer just below conscious thought. It was as if he'd forgotten to do something. And then it stopped.  
  
He straightened in shock, closing his eyes to make sure, but it was gone. The broom fell from his hands and he batted at his head as if it were a broken radio, lightly, at first, then harder.  
  
"What're you hitting your head for?"  
  
He looked up and there it was, that simple grin. Goku came towards him, looking lazy and relaxed. "Wow! It looks good. You couldn't be the full- time gardener."  
  
He was having trouble making the transition, somehow. His jaws seemed glued. Goku didn't seem to notice or even mind. "Sanzo, let's get lunch! I'm starved."  
  
"Lunch?" He managed to raise an eyebrow. "It's four in the afternoon."  
  
"Fine, not-lunch then. But whatever! They better have something other than tofu."  
  
"Omelette," he heard himself say. "They can probably do an omelette."  
  
"A 'Welcome Home' omelette?"  
  
"A 'Bakazaru Special'."  
  
"You suck at this," but there was no pain behind the grin, only ease and understanding.  
  
He fought against the sharp pain in his throat. This was what he'd been planning all along. And it had worked, just when he was starting to worry.  
  
"Gonna send me away afterwards?" Goku asked as they made their way to the kitchens.  
  
"You'd just come back again," and it didn't sound as insulting as he'd intended. Sounded almost like a question.  
  
"Nope."  
  
"Really." It was hard, but he forced himself to keep walking.  
  
"I wouldn't leave."  
  
"Really." It was even harder, but he forced himself to keep walking. Walking.  
  
"So don't do it, okay? I think maybe you were right and I needed to go, but I'm back now and we really don't have that much time so we shouldn't waste it." The words were a little jumbled at the end, but it was more than he would have known to say a year ago, and he was right. They didn't have that much time. No one did. Something else he'd learned, then, on the road.  
  
They were almost at the kitchens, and he saw anxious faces hurrying out, a few cries of "He's back!"  
  
"So, can I stay now?"  
  
He took a deep breath before answering.  
  
"Since you know, why ask?"  
  
Goku's grin was wide and brighter than the burnished gold Buddha. He resisted the urge to grab him and pour a year of muted words into the strength of his arms just long enough to hear the boy say, "I forgive you for making me sit under the tree."  
  
***  
  
the end.  
  
yes, i know. it's so WAFFy it'll probably make you diabetic. and it's OOC. and there's not really any smut.  
  
ho-yay!  
  
tell me what you think anyways? *puppy eyes* after all, i am sacrificing my sleep (average over the past four nights--4.3 hours) to write this in one sitting. the least you can do is pat me on the head and say, "what a cute little waste of time." 


End file.
